More on Malawi :)

Another wee update on us.  We’ve arrived safely in NZ and so far are enjoying being back with family.  We went to a supermarket the other day,  I never thought I would be so happy to be in a supermarket!  There were soo many things that I hadn’t seen for a while and wanted.  Jono had to limit my buying!  We’ve been suffering a bit of jet lag.  As for next year, we are none the wiser!

I left you just after we’d arrived in Cape McClear, Malawi.  We spent 3 days there, here is a summary (a rather long one) of it.  The ‘beach’ is quite nice, golden sands.  A bit sinky to walk on though.  Unfortunately there’s a reasonable amount of rubbish on it, which I found a bit sad.  There were lots of locals out on the lake front – washing.  Washing themselves, washing their clothes, washing their dishes, washing anything else you can think of that needs washing.  This makes a walk along the lake front a bit novel, dodging in and out of the locals cos the sand is too hot for you to walk on it, so you want to be slightly in the water. 

Some of the washing

Sunset

The view from our lodge

Often saw fishermen in canoes

Jono's artistic shot

Sunset :)

Uncomfortably I have never seen so many naked people in my life before.  It seems there it’s appropriate up to about the age of 8 to be naked.  What’s even more alarming is that some of them try to get you to take their picture.  I didn’t really want to have a picture of a naked 8 year old local on my camera, so kindly refused.  The water itself is quite nice, definitely worth multiple dips due to the heat!  Sadly slightly murky I imagine from all the stuff that is put in from the washing, and rubbish.  Often on walkies people would harass you down the beach trying to get you to buy their stuff(souvenirs).  Engaging with them is dangerous, it’s hard to leave once you do.  Towards the end though it kinda felt like we got some reasonable deals.  We had money issues there – Cape McClear doesn’t have an ATM, and some of Southern Africa seems to be a cash society.  I don’t think street people would accept a credit card, and that’s where the best deals are (I think!).  We had tried to get money out at monkey bay (the town before Cape M) but the ATM didn’t work :(.  Luckily one of the local lodges let us get money out, otherwise it would have been no souvenirs.  The food there is pretty cheap ~$5-9 for a restaurant meal, food takes QUITE a while to come, it felt like we spent about an hour before each meal waiting.   

View from the lodge's resturant

And of course you can pay for some local entertainment

 Drinks were cheap too ~$3 for a cocktail, ~$1 for a bottle of water.  We swam, walked and read a reasonable amount.  One morning we started to climb a hill, we got up early to try to avoid the heat of the day.  However it’s hot at 6 in the morning, so it was still sweaty as.  Turns out no one else is up at that time and wanting to sell you water, so we had one 500ml bottle between us!  We didn’t make it to the top, water issues, heat, plus the terrain was getting a bit tough/grassy/could easily stand on a snake.  But we still got a pretty sweet view, and some DECENT exercise.  When we got down and found a stall – we had the best drink of pineapple Fanta EVER.  It tasted AMAZING.  We drunk 1 bottle while we were waiting for the guy to get our change.  We continued along the beach and stopped at another place for another drink, which also tasted absolutely amazing, but not quite so amazing as the pineapple Fanta.  

The view

Us, someone didn't tell me I had messy hair!

The flys up there were super annoying. 

 We went for a boat ride to a nearby island and did some snorkelling, watched fish eagles being feed and jumped off a reasonably sized rock.   

Hard to take photo's of fish without an underwater camera

Fish Eagles

The leap of faith...

The nights were sooo hot I had to (resort to, I was resistant to this for quite sometime!) sleeping with a wet towel on me, with the fan going.

A bird for Malcolm to idenify

The picture doesn't show so well, but my bum is on the ground.  Useless hamack!  Maybe that's a hint?

Signs!  I do find them enjoyable

Not sure if we bit it back? I can't remember what we ate entirely

It’s kinda funny how long a summary is!!!  I guess I should leave it there so it’s not SUPER long.

 Prayer thanks

- For safety as we've travelled

- During the first leg of our flights we randomly got upgraded to Business class which was soooo lovely!
- For the good times we've had with family and friends

Prayer requests
- For guidance about what to do next year.
- For continued safety as we continue to travel
- For more good times with family and friends

Bethesda and OM prayer requests
- For a good, safe and refreshing holiday break for the staff.
 

The commencement . . . . of . . . . Malawi :)

Week commencing the 28^th Oct (Yes I know miles and miles behind!! But some of it isn’t my fault, some of it is, but SOME of it isn’t!!)

Brief update on us currently . . .

We have finished up in Kabwe.  We are currently now in Livingstone, having a final holiday before we return.  Trying to make the most of being across this part of the world.  We return to NZ on the 17^th Dec.  Our plans from there, only God knows.  We are praying about what direction he wants us to go in, he hasn’t made that clear yet. 

Back to the week commencing 28^th Oct . . .

Partially due to our disappointment of not getting to go up to Lake Tanganyika , we decided to head to Lake Malawi for a holiday J.  Tuesday afternoon we started our journey.  Because of this we went home partway during the day, only to discover road works on the road.  This was fairly normal, and normal to have no warning.  So I just lifted up the tape blocking the access to our road (and the house which was just across the road).  We had done this on many occasions before and even had the road works men do it for us.  But that day apparently was the wrong day to do it.  I had a man run down the road yelling at us.  Telling us we could be sued for the damage to the road (we literally had driven just across it, not even down it).  He was completely unreasonable, we suggested that if they wanted to restrict access to the house maybe they should actually give us warning, as we have a life and need to use the access.  Sigh.  Luckily for the other people that lived there, they saw just in time to take the cars out!   But like I said no warning!

Wednesday was a super long bus ride to Lilongwe, Malawi (12 hrs).  It left an hour and a half late. Sigh.  First toilet stop, 5 hours into the journey!  I think they like to give you bladder training here! We stayed the night at an ‘interesting’ lodge.  When you walked into the room, the bugs ran away from your feet.  The cold water pretty much ran out after Jono’s shower, which wasn’t long, maybe 5 mins.  The fan was broken (unfortunately when it was soo hot), no mosquito net, it was generally pretty worn out. Oh how I wish I’d taken a photo now!  This was a new low on the accommodation front.  I guess the price was reflective of that, costing a whole $15 for the both of us.  First thoughts of Malawi compared to Zambia:  It is incredibley cultivated.  Zambia has minimal cultivation.

Yes the boot is that full, and yes they will drive around like that, wait, maybe they'll try to stuff some more in

The sign on the door at the new low

Thursday was a hit of culture.  We hoped on a bus, it was pretty full.  We couldn’t sit together because there weren’t two seats together. Once we were on board I think there may have been two other spare seats.  But when they were filled that wasn’t enough no, we had to wait for about 17 people to fill the aisle as well.  And then there was the bus itself.  As seems typical in African buses they have 5 seats across.  The bus had seats that were worn/showing stuffing.  But that wasn’t the worst bit.  There was a window missing.  Some of the bottom parts of the seats weren’t properly attached.  And on a couple of seats, they had no backrests.  Africa is redefining my standards of things A LOT!  I would think nothing of a ten hour bus ride in New Zealand now, 4 seats across, toilet stops every 2 hours, no people in the aisle – LUXURY!!! Then there was the ‘drive through’ experience – which I really got into.  Every time the bus would stop, people would come outside the windows selling things, something that resembled island donuts (I loved these – mmm), water, fizzy drinks, lollipops, fruit, biscuits, hot chips – out would go the heads/arms of the people on the bus to make their purchases.  And the best part, most of it was super cheap.  15c for a donut, 50c for a bottle of water – fun times.  The most novel thing I happened to see at the bus stop before we left, a fridge being loaded onto the bus, that’s right a fridge!  We arrived at Monkey Bay unsure of how to get to Cape Maclear.  We got offered a ride, it was quite expensive, but we didn’t really think we had many other options. Our bus ride had cost for the both of us about $15 to go about 5 hours.  Our ‘taxi’ cost double that for a 30 min ride L We were in the cab of a 2 seater ute, which meant I didn’t have a seat.  That made for an uncomfortable ride!  We hadn’t booked accommodation, as we’d decided to just wing it.  We rocked up to a place, and they had room, so that was all good.

I'm not sure the picture really captures the essence of the bus, but I tried

I think there is a good place to leave things

Prayer thanks

-           - For safety while we’ve been travelling and white water rafting

-           - For awesome scenery and animals

-           - For holidays

Prayer requests

-           - For guidance about what to do next year

-          - For continued safety while we travel

Bethesda and OM requests

-          See previous post

-     - One item of prayer thanks - Samuel's burn was healed over before I left.  Yay.  Please continue to pray for his scar healing.  Thank you for your prayers they obviously helped!

Boats, nshima and making faces

We've had no internet most of the week (story of my life!) however you are in luck as we got it back yesterday!

Weeks of the 13th ish and 21st Oct 

-        On Sunday we went to Grace church.  I was feeling a bit homesick, and said that to a guy there.  His family were heading out to Mulingushi for Sunday and Monday.  He invited us along, and we gratefully accepted!  It was so nice to get away from Kabwe and have a bit of scenery, go for a boat ride, a walk, and swim in the lake (and pool).  The lake apparently has only a couple of crocodiles in it, lucky our limbs are still in tact!  Their family (esp the Mum and Dad) were real passionate adventurous Christians, some of the most inspirational people we've met here.  

On top of that rock again.

I liked this gecko, seems a classic pose.

      Monday evening was a talk by the Mum (Tina).  The following Monday evening she did another one. They were amazing.  She read this book called 'a more excellent way', which talks about gaining healing by confession/repentance.  She is so passionate about what God has done in her, and about his word.  She talks about her old self  (where she was on the mission field but she was angry at God and barely prayed or read the bible), and her new self and the transformation sounds amazing.  It's been a long time since I've come home from a talk feeling like I want to get more into God/his word.

      Thursday we had them round for dinner.

      Also on Thursday we were told we had to attend a mid-afternoon meeting.  We found out about it the day before which was after we'd already made dinner plans.  It required a compulsory donation.  It was only once we got there that we found out that it was a banquet and food was what the donation was for.  

-        Jono has been doing an inventory of items at Bethesda (which he finished this week).  He also continues to help Peter with computer tasks, one week was help training-up with the newsletter, yes it does take that long!  On both Fridays Jono talked at the Makalulu group, the main challenge was he had no interpreter for one.

-        We attended the braii on Friday night, Jono got asked to say grace, he commenced with “God thank you for the All Blacks” which was pretty hilarious in front of a number of South Africans.  That'll be the last time he's asked to say grace at the braii!

      School continued to go reasonably well, I enjoy the children a lot.

Me making nshima under Brenda's guidance, with an onlooker!

Jono also had a go, much to their amusement!

Kids practising emotions.

What do you do when your truck is too tall for the line that crosses the road?  Lift it over the truck of course.  Nothing like holding up traffic on the 'state highway 1' of Zambia/Africa!

Ut oh I'm screwed when I get back to NZ! (read the small blue writing under "trading")

      On Saturday we went to the market, I brought lots of Chitengis.  Answers to Kabwe-itis (while remaining in Kabwe) Chitengis and juice!  (Maybe I’ll include chocolate too!!!  Mmmm chocolate). We started watching a boring dvd 'Robin hood men in tights' I think it was meant to be funny, however the humour didn't appeal to me.  We didn't finish it.  I couldn't.  We also played risk with our neighbour, it's been a long time since I've played (I didn't do very well.)

-       Tuesday we went to Volleyball only to discover it was packed, so many people.  So we decided to bail, but Tina invited us in for a ‘coffee’ and we played pickle ball with her and her son instead.  Pickle ball is great, like a cross between table tennis and tennis

-        I had a small frame made for a 3 year old girl as everything we had was too big.  I got to give it out, which was nice.

      We had our first thunderstorm, amazeballs, and our first rain (that was longer then 10 secs). I like rain so much more here!  Its amazing what having so long without rain can do to you.

Jono excited by that drop of rain, do you see it????

      Thursday 24th was Zambian independence day which meant a holiday J We were planning to head to Ibis gardens (haven’t been there but it has a pool) but it was too cold after the rain/thunderstorm.  Instead we headed to a missionary's farm and spent some of the day there playing games/eating.  We headed home and were busy preparing things for the next day. We rewatched the pineapple story with our neighbour (he’d been feeling in a bit of culture shock).

-          Friday we had the kids independence celebration – I made a cake, pinyata (we papermached a balloon), pass the parcel, treasure hunt, and they did traditional Zambian dancing. 

      

      We babysat on Saturday for a missionary family/families most of the day had 3 kids, but part of it had 5! We were pretty worn out by the time we finished.  Having kids is hard work!!

Prayer thanks
- For safety while we've been travelling
- We have finally obtained our work permits and my physio registration!!!  We are now officially allowed to stay a year and a half longer then we intend to.

Prayer requests
- Jono would really love some more awesome thunderstorms
- For safety while we travel
- For our final week here in Kabwe to be good.
- For guidance about what to do when we return.
- That God would be number 1 our marriage number 2

Bethesda prayer items
- For Peter and Brenda as they lead
- For the property for the new school
- For the team to grow in number and spiritually
- For the Makalulu group
- For Sandra, she continues to struggle spiritually in Canada.
- For those involved in the accident
- For Samuel, one of the Bethesda kids.  His mother burned his leg for stealing.  It's a reasonabley big burn (about the size of 1-2 business cards) and will probably take weeks/months to heal.

OM prayer requests
- For Pastor Melvin and the leadership team to guide OM Zambia well
- For safety and enjoyable times for those going away over the Christmas break
- For good new recruits for next year
- For the building project